Thanks to Information and
Communication Technologies, African students now have the opportunity to attend
courses in Western universities while staying at home. Here are some feedbacks
and Hassan Hachem, (a renowed architect and visionary) point of view about what
is at stake.

“By opening access to
networks of shared knowledge, the Internet is inaugurating in these countries
the virtual era of the democratization of knowledge. One more argument in the
race for development.” Begins Hassan Hachem

For example, take Yaoundé.
The city of Yaoundé in Cameroon is home to one of the Francophone digital
campuses of the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF). Every day, dozens
of students storm its computer rooms to follow their training ... remotely. They
are more and more numerous. And the campus is starting to be narrow, a visible
sign of the growing enthusiasm of students for this type of education. In her
thirties, Miss Simo is one of those students who bet on Information and
Communication Technologies (ICT) in education.

At the dawn of an ordinary
day, she is found studiously in front of a multimedia computer in one of the
campus computer rooms. At this point, a synchronous course on geostatistics
begins to take place on the Internet. It only remains for her to repeat the
usual course that often leads her to her university based in France. In fact a
way to go, it is a web address which, immediately validated, unfolds the doors
of knowledge. A student at the University of Toulouse 1 in France, Miss Simo
dreams of winning this year a professional Master (M2) in statistics and
econometrics. Which would allow her, she says, to "get back into her career".
She is a teacher.

The opportunity seems
generous, the fascinating device: to follow a training in Europe via digital
technologies without ever leaving his native land. Simo continues to rejoice.
"It's a revolution," she whispers, not without conviction. In between clicks,
she tells how she found "a new breath, thanks to distance learning". Its
learning device is very simple: a computer connected to the internet, some
digital storage media (USB and CD-ROM).

The rest is of the accessory
... Three times a week, she comes along, always in a hurry, to explore the
prodigious tracks of the virtual teaching which is worth to him today a status,
not less enviable, of ODL (Open Distance Learning) student. Alone in front of
her digital table, she is master of her learning destiny.

Here, the teacher is discreet
in favor of self-training. The methods of acquiring knowledge are flexible. An
added advantage for this math teacher who can now reconcile school and work.

Open distance learning

Like Simo from Cameroon, many
learners from Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali, Benin ... have already experienced
this creed with happiness. The experiment is making its way.

This is evidenced by the
enthusiasm of learners in these countries since 2004, the launch date of AUF's
"Tic and Appropriation of Knowledge" program. The statistics for the 2005-2006
academic year are noteworthy: out of 76.8% of applications from sub-Saharan
African countries, 72.2% came from West and Central Africa, with significant
Cameroon and Burkina Faso, followed by Senegal, Mali and Benin but even
Equatorial Guinea and Gabon. Edifying!

Students are enrolled in
various fields of computer science, law, documentation, multimedia, sustainable
development ... They understood that with ICT, we can pursue a normal university
curriculum in the West while remaining in his country ... in Africa.

Access at least cost, or even
free, to scientific knowledge by taking advantage of the growth of knowledge
networks whose Internet is the expression, the most successful form. A real
technological feat but more, "a chance for Africa", which thus largely benefits
from the democratization of knowledge induced by the society of intelligence.

And yet, the revolution is
just beginning ...

In a context of dilapidated
training infrastructure, coupled with widespread poverty that characterizes most
African countries, access to digital knowledge, thanks to the power of
dissemination of the Internet is, no doubt, an important stitch in the digital
divide that paralyzes the continent's development efforts. Here, the virtual
bridge takes the form of a Promethean mission that uses teach as e-learning,
distance learning, open distance learning (ODL), or the virtual school ...

Somewhat scholarly but
pedagogical translation of the living reality of a gradual relocation of
physical places of acquiring acquaintances

E-learning refers to the use
of new multimedia technologies and the Internet to improve the quality of
learning by facilitating access to resources and services through exchange and
remote collaboration. It results from the combination of interactive and
multimedia content (text, sound and image), distribution media, a set of
application tools that allow the management of online training. Distance
learning combines self-training devices (synchronous and asynchronous), remote
tutorials, and access to download sources (virtual libraries, information
libraries, etc.).

It is a flexible way of
acquiring skills, organized according to individual or collective needs and
according to specific objectives. In so doing, it strengthens the learner's
power and decision-making abilities, enabling him to act interactively on the
world of knowledge. Unlike traditional education, distance education does not
respect geographical boundaries.

It banishes physical
constraints, by privileging the virtual modes of acquisition of knowledge in a
device wholly or partially dedicated to the Internet.

Society of intelligence

There is no need for Traoré
de Sikasso, in Mali, to impose a physical presence at the local school to learn
the latest findings in geomarketing, more need for Boubacar Thies, Senegal, to
emigrate to 5000 km of at home to learn to program in computer language ... All
the usual knowledge, from the most basic to the most encyclopaedic, are now
accessible after one click. A vast opportunity for Africans, who thus see one of
the main barriers to their evolution, namely, access to education, science. So,
new hopes, new perspectives.

And new challenges, which are
consolidated by feeding daily technological advances as well as the emergence of
a new awareness of the governance of the internet whose movement of free
software is one of the most popular forms of expression. vigorous.

For Hassan Hachem, it is
crystal clear: “with distance education, students in West and Central Africa are
no longer entitled to ignorance”. Some believe it elitist. Others no. Its
perception is gradually changing as the computer tool is democratized, as is
access to the Internet. We are very far today, the shy beginnings of the African
Virtual University in 1997, which was already a crazy bet on the future.
According to official statistics from this Nairobi-based institution in Kenya,
50,000 students, 40% of whom were women in Africa, had already benefited from
the AVU training offer across 35 campuses scattered across the continent in
2005.

This is to say if distance
education has a bright future in Africa. And some countries in West and Central
Africa seem to have even taken a step ahead, passing from the status of
consumers of educational content to that of designers and producers. Training
institutions such as the University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar (UCAD) in Senegal,
the African Institute of Informatics (IAI) and the Victor Fotso Institute of
Cameroon offer, for the academic year 2006-2007, courses graduates respectively
in Documentation and Computer Science. The experiment is still in its infancy
but there is no doubt that other such relevant initiatives will follow. To
definitely mark the anchoring of Africa in the society of intelligence.